Retired General Barry McCaffrey has released a report on Iraq, a report that contradicts the assertions of Bush, McCain and Lieberman (to just name a few) who continue to mislead and lie to the world.
Point in case, Bush is on TV right now bashing the Democrats (gag) and he just said that Iraq has $10 billion ready to spend on repairs in their country (paraphrasing here until the transcript is up), yet McCaffrey’s report states:
There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation--- not health care, not justice, not education, not transportation, not labor and commerce, not electricity, not oil production. There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance. The government cannot spend its own money effectively. ($7.1 billion sits in New York banks.) No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi---without heavily armed protection.
More....
McCaffrey’s report points out the desperation right now in Iraq, while also noting some of the military progress we have made. One part worth noting is that:
The US and Iraqi Forces have now dramatically changed their operational scheme. More then 50+ Iraqi Police/Army and US Army Joint Security Stations (JSS) are now being emplaced across the city and extended into the suburbs. The pre-operation planning and rehearsals were superb. The presence of these joint military elements is now becoming ubiquitous across the urban areas. Although many of these small outposts have been attacked—none has yet been seriously jeopardized. The Iraqi people are encouraged ---life is almost immediately springing back in many parts of the city. The murder rate has plummeted. IED attacks on US forces during their formerly vulnerable daily transits from huge US bases on the periphery of Baghdad are down--- since these forces are now permanently based in their operational area.
Though McCaffrey relays in his report some progress, most of what is in the report is dire at best, something our community has noted for some time now. For instance he says this:
The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings. There is no effective nation-wide court system. There are in general almost no acceptable Iraqi penal institutions. The population is terrorized by rampant criminal gangs involved in kidnapping, extortion, robbery, rape, massive stealing of public property ---such as electrical lines, oil production material, government transportation, etc.
And today we see this being reported:
(03-28) 04:00 PDT Baghdad -- Hundreds of Iraqis detained in the current security crackdown have been crammed into two prisons run by the Defense Ministry that were designed to hold only dozens of people, a government monitoring group said Tuesday.
The numbers suggest that the security plan's emphasis on aggressive, block-by-block sweeps of troubled Baghdad neighborhoods has flooded Iraq's frail prison system, and appear to confirm the fears of some human-rights advocates who have been predicting that the new plan would aggravate already-poor conditions.
And this:
Revenge killings
Meantime, police and hospital officials said off-duty Shiite policemen enraged by massive bombings in the northern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there on Wednesday, killing at least 45 men.
The policemen began roaming the town’s Sunni neighborhoods on foot early in the morning, shooting at Sunni residents and homes.
And in the face of reality we have Lieberman offering
a discombobulated explanation for his opposition, stating on the one hand he believes the U.S. military can and should "police a civil war," while on the other hand stating Iraq is not in a civil war.
McCaffery states that Iraq is:
ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month.
McCain is even more absurd, as his appearance on CNN yesterday proved.
How safe can Americans be in Baghdad neighborhoods when they are being killed in the Green Zone?
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associate Press Writer Tue Mar 27, 6:52 PM ET
BAGHDAD - Two Americans, a contractor and a soldier, were killed in a rocket attack on the heavy guarded Green Zone on Tuesday, according to statements from the U.S. Embassy and the military.
Of course McCain is the "victim" here, and today he lashed out at the press:
On Fox and Friends this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) noted that he allows "jerks from the media" to come on board his bus, the "Straight Talk Express."
MCCAIN: Sure. We are going to do just fine. We are going to have fun. That’s the important thing in these campaigns. We are back to the town hall meetings and I love them more than anything else.
FOX: You will take a question from anybody about anything.
MCCAIN: And I also have these jerks come on the bus, too.
FOX: You have who come on the bus?
MCCAIN: These jerks from the media.
FOX: Ok. Of course that couldn’t be me, I hope. I haven’t been on a bus in a while without paying a fare.
MCCAIN: Come on. You are welcome on.
McCaffrey’s report states at the end that:
The primary war winning strategy for the United States in the coming 12 months must be for Ambassador Ryan and General Petraeus to focus their considerable personal leadership skills on getting the top 100 Shia and Sunni leaders to walk back from the edge of all-out civil war. Reconciliation is the way out. There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable US force levels. Military power cannot alone defeat an insurgency—the political and economic struggle for power is the actual field of battle.
And yet McCaffrey’s echoes this administration and the Neo Cons when he states in his report that "Our cause is just," and then goes on to state that "this whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle."
Read the whole report and note that the "progress" McCaffrey notes is mainly the ability of our military, which doesn't help a situation that must be solved economically and socially.
There is really not much new in this diary, however it becomes increasingly clear that those like Bush, Lieberman and McCain have no regard for the truth (they really never have) and each day they are exposed more and more for their apparent ability to deal with anything close to reality.